Vincent Price hams it up as an ageing horror star, staying with his friend Peter Cushing in England after a Hollywood breakdown. His character Dr Death seems to be real with people around him suffering grisly deaths. This one plays like an Italian Giallo movie, a murder mystery horror with an unknown masked, black leather gloved killer and a police investigation.
As well as horror heavyweights Price and Cushing the cast also includes Robert (Count Yorga) Quarry and British Scream Queen Linda Hayden. Made by Amicus, a company who were best known for their horror anthologies, at which they excelled, however they also made single plot movies, as with this one. For me it is far from Price's best performance, he was far better as Phibes or Matthew Hopkins, to name just a few of his previous roles. Likewise Cushing's performance is so far away from those we enjoyed, such as Frankenstein or Van Helsing. One of the female leads is played by Adrienne Corri, I believe her character is American but her natural Scottish accent keeps slipping out. British TV chat show host Michael Parkinson appears as himself, which was quite novel. Linda Hayden looks gorgeous as always, here she sadly keeps her clothes on.
As a life long horror fan, especially of British horror from this period, I really wanted to like Madhouse. Sadly it was rather flat. Yes, there is plenty to see here, including clips from Price's older movies, featuring Basil Rathbone and Boris Karloff, but it just did not live up to my hopes or expectations. In addition to horror there is also humour, one scene involves a couple repeatedly asking Price for "Ten thousand pounds", it was quite funny, almost slapstick. but I'm not sure that it felt right, was it meant to be a straight horror movie or was the humour intentional? I'll go with the latter. In Britain this is still certified as an 18, seems a bit harsh to me. I wish I could score it higher but it's a 6/10 from me.
Review of Madhouse
